Project Details
Location: Haiti
Owner: Saint Boniface Haiti Foundation
The new bridge is approximately an hour south of the original crossing. The reasons for needing the new bridge are the same as before. Vehicles and pedestrians currently drive or walk through the river during low flows but when the river rises after heavy rains, traffic is cut off for many days at a time or at the very least make it dangerous to cross. The new bridge will provide year round safe access between a medical clinic in the town of Villa and the main hospital in Fond-des-Blancs. It will also connect multiple communities, markets and schools in the area that typically have no access during periods of rain. The original bridge was 36m long. The new crossing is a 45m long clearspan steel bridge.
The bridge was fabricated at Rapid Span’s main bridge plant in Canada, disassembled, packed, and shipped to Haiti in four shipping containers. The structure was designed to be prefabricated as much as possible to ease construction requirements on site. The bridge was installed during January/February of 2018 which is historically the dry season and therefore lowest flows in the river. For this project, an experienced team of bridge contractors from Canada donated their time and personnel to install the bridge in Haiti. This project like the previous bridge is being done all through donations.
